Customer call centers, or simply, “call centers,” are often the first point of contact for customers seeking direct assistance from manufacturers and service vendors. Call centers are reachable by telephone, including data network-based telephone services, such as Voice-Over-Internet (VoIP), and provide customer support and problem resolution. Although Worldwide Web- and email-based customer support are becoming increasingly available, call centers still offer a convenient and universally-accessible forum for remote customer assistance.
The timeliness and quality of service provided by call centers is critical to ensuring customer satisfaction, particularly where caller responses are generated through automation. Generally, the expectation level of callers is lower when they are aware that an automated system, rather than a live human agent, is providing assistance. However, customers become less tolerant of delays, particularly when the delays occur before every automated system-generated response. Minimizing delays is crucial, even when caller volume is high.
Caller delay times can decreased by having more agents available to handle customer calls. Each new call can be assigned to an agent preferably in an ordered fashion to allow cooperative and consistent call processing, even where the call volume is high. Each additional call that is assigned to an agent, though, can affect the agent's workload, which can, in turn, affect the delay times experienced by callers. As a result, simply adding more agents to handle calls can be a naïve and ineffective solution.
Determining true agent work load is contingent upon several independent and wide ranging factors, including agent experience, time of day, caller need, and so forth. Moreover, agent load cannot always be generated as an automated index, as the amount of time spent by an agent on each call is both an objective and subjective inquiry. Objective factors, such as the number of calls currently assigned, are readily determinable, but subjective timing considerations based on individual agent control, such as determining how soon an agent may be able to take additional callers, can complicate caller assignment.
Therefore, there is a need for an approach to efficiently assigning calls to agent consoles based on continually variable independent and agent discretionary conditions.